Hebrews Lesson 217 October
29, 2010
NKJ Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he
trusts in You.
We are going to do another final
review tonight going through Hebrews one last time. These lessons I try to do
periodically when you have a series that goes for some 219 hours or lasts
actually about 5 years which is about how long we've been in this study I
think. I couldn’t remember if I started this when I first started at the church
or if I had already started it in Connecticut. A little while after I got here?
That's what I thought. So we have been in this for a while; at least five
years. There are many things that we’ve studied as we’ve gone through
Hebrews.
This has been a great study. It's
been a tremendous time to learn many things. I know I've learned a lot; I'm
sure you have as well. Especially in the middle part of Hebrews in chapter 7,
8, especially 9 as we got into a lot of the sacrifices and going back and doing
a lot of detailed study in the Old Testament on the Temple, the Tabernacle, all
of the different sacrifices and the different furniture in the Temple and the
Tabernacle, putting all that together so that we can have a better
understanding of what the writer of Hebrews was saying. We spent almost a year
just going through a couple of those chapters because we did so much work back
in the Old Testament and that was very, very helpful.
But sometimes as we drill down in a
lot of those kinds of details we lose the forest for the trees. We forget that
when this was first written to the original audience that it was read to them
in a single sitting. And when it was read to them because of the relationship
that the writer (the author) had with his audience, because of shared
experiences, because of their shared backgrounds, because the audience was
extremely familiar with what he was talking about; they were much more familiar
with all of the allusions to the Old Testament and references to the sacrificial
system than we are. It made a tremendous amount of sense to them and they could
catch the major points, the major emphases a lot more than we do.
Furthermore, in light of the way the
book of Hebrews fits within the whole canon of the New Testament (the 27 books
of the New Testament). When we study Hebrews not only in terms of itself but in
light of other revelation that's given in the New Testament plus the Old
Testament revelation given through the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the
Temple, the Tabernacle and all those different studies; then as we dig down
into what the writer said, we are able to come to an understanding of nuances and
details and implications that perhaps the original writer and the original audience
were not fully aware. It is not that it is contradictory or different, it is
that they did not have all of the tools and all of the history of doctrine that
we have which comes back to help inform our understanding of Hebrews.
Now that's an odd concept for a lot
of people. The best illustration I have of that is to state that most of us
have a better, have a more precise understanding of the doctrine of the
Trinity: that you have one God, one in essence, but this one God is a perfect
unity in a trinity, and there are three distinct persons within that Godhead,
and this is expressed in that word that I just used – trinity. We
understand that better than any of the writers of Scripture because they did
not have that word trinity. So we have a vocabulary today that has been refined
and honed down through the centuries that enable us to talk and communicate and
to understand some of these more abstract concepts that are in the Scriptures
that are were not available in the first century. So it is not that we believe
something different. It is that we have a more precise, a more focused
understanding of many of these things than the writers of Scripture did –
than the Apostle Paul or the writer of Hebrews or the Apostle John.
This is how God constructed His Word
so that it wouldn't be of the nature of perhaps a book that we study – an
every day book that we might study in philosophy or history or some other
discipline where we read it once, maybe twice, maybe three times and probe the
depths of the writer’s thinking. The Bible is such that the more you read it,
the more you understand it, the more you learn, the deeper you go into the
teaching, the doctrines and all of the different complexities that are there. Every
time you go you see new things and the Lord teaches you new things, and you
come to a deeper and richer appreciation of the Lord's plan, purposes in
history and the Lord’s plan, purposes in our own lives. That is especially
something that we find true in a book like Hebrews.
So it is important to not only look
at all the details, but also to take time to sort of stand up and get a little
further above the teaching that is there to get the
overall thrust. We did this at the beginning and now we have we done it several
times as we've gone through the text, and now we're doing it again at the
end.
So just to review and remind ourselves a little bit about this particular book, one of
the interesting things about this book is that it presents a puzzle in a number
of different ways. For people who really like mysteries and like puzzles and
like to do lots of investigation, there's a lot to give them work in the study
of Hebrews. We don't know who wrote it. We don't know whom he wrote it to. We
don't know where he was when he wrote it. We don't know where they were when he
wrote it to them. We're not precisely sure why he wrote it in terms of the
immediate occasion for this writing. There's even been some debate over just
exactly what type of literature it is.
Now just because there are debates
over issues especially since we’re right in the middle of the political season
and everybody's all paying attention to the different candidates running for
office. You hear one candidate make a case for one thing and another candidate
make what may sound to be an equally valid case for something different. What's
important is to do a lot of investigation and find out who's actually shading
things in one direction or another direction. Just because people make strong cases for different
positions doesn't mean that they’re even close to the bull's eye when it
comes to understanding the truth.
There are a lot of people who have been way off course in making certain
assertions about different things in the Bible and all they've done is
demonstrate their lack of knowledge.
Such was the case I think with the
King James Version as I pointed out in terms of authorship that if you have a
King James translation at the beginning of the book a Hebrews it says “The book
of Hebrews according to the Apostle Paul.” So the King James Version made a
dogmatic assertion that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews. Nobody knows who wrote
Hebrews.
The style of the writing in the
Greek is very different from Paul's. The vocabulary is very different. There
are a number of other facets that are also different - not that a writer or
individual can’t write a little differently at times depending on the subject
matter. Of course if the subject matter changes he’ll use different vocabulary.
But especially today with the use of computers and things of that nature we can
do some pretty remarkable things in terms of analyzing pieces of literature to
see how they relate to other pieces of literature written by the same person. You
can really track out a lot of different patterns. So it's pretty well accepted
that we don't know who wrote Hebrews. There are a number of different theories.
Some people think possibly it was Luke. Other people think it might have been Apollos who was also very much associated with Paul.
There are many concepts within
Hebrews that are close to Pauline, that are clearly influenced by Paul’s
thinking. So it is generally thought that the person who wrote it, especially
at the end he says he's awaiting Timothy. So he was one of those who were
closely associated with the Apostle Paul. We don't know exactly who it was. There
have even been some who suggested it was possibly written originally in Aramaic
and then translated into Greek.
There are some very creative
theories out there. There are always people who think that they have finally
solved the mystery. Then it is important to send them to a doctor so that they
can get on their medication. There's always a seminary student every now and
then who is over stressed from classes who is studying for his third all nighter and about three o'clock in the morning decides he
knows who wrote the book of Hebrews. We don't know.
There are certain clues though about
the group that he's writing to. They're clearly a group of people who have an
intimate understanding of the Old Testament sacrificial system. They’re clearly
a group of people who have a Jewish background because of those references. They're
clearly a group of people who have a probably a second generation of Christians
a group that has gone back to the early days of the church and they are
struggling with whether or not they are going to continue. They are weary from
persecution. They're weary from facing adversity. They're not different from a
lot of Christians that I know and talk to one a day-by-day basis. They're just
facing all the different vicissitudes of life, the challenges, the struggles
with everything from finances to health, to job, career, family, parents,
children, grandchildren, dogs, cats. Everybody is facing their
own challenges. Sometimes we're just weary of the struggle and weary of the
battle. We just want to quit, go in a hole somewhere and get away from it. They
weren’t any different from that.
So the basic theme of the book of
Hebrews is to challenge these believers with the importance of sticking it out,
running the race to the finish line and understanding that the race is merely a
qualification for a future position of ruling and reigning with the Lord Jesus
Christ when He returns at the end of the Tribulation to
establish His kingdom.
We are going through a boot camp so
to speak. We are going through something like (using a military analogy we're
going through something like boot camp or Ranger School and how we finish the
training will have a lot to do with what kinds of responsibilities and roles we
have in the future kingdom as members of the body of Christ who will rule and
reign with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Millennial Kingdom.
So it's important to keep our eye on
the end goal. Again and again and again I’ve emphasized the basic theme that we
need to live today in light of eternity and not get distracted by all the
details and pressures and disappointments and surprises that we face on a
day-to-day basis but to keep our eye on the end game. God is in control. There
are no surprises in the plan of God. The plan of God doesn't get upset. God isn't shocked by things that happened. He is in the
process of supervising our lives and the details of our lives to bring us to a
point of spiritual maturity.
The writer of Hebrews emphasizes
that this was a pattern that was seen in the Lord Jesus Christ and if He who
was perfect without a sin nature need to matured, needed to be trained and
brought to maturity in His humanity by going through various kinds of
adversities, various kinds of situations so that He would
learn in His humanity how to trust God, claim promises, how to utilize what we
usually refer to as the problem solving devices, how to grow in terms of the
spiritual skills of grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, living today in
light of eternity, our personal sense of eternal destiny, personal love for
God, impersonal love for all mankind - all of these kinds of things the Lord
Jesus Christ had to grow in those things. It’s not that He didn't have a sin
nature so he didn’t sin; He was without sin. But He still had to grow and learn
those things in His humanity. He didn't just know them intuitively because of
the fact that He was also God.
We talked some about the
understanding that Jesus Christ in terms of the hypostatic union - that Jesus
as the Second Person of the Trinity was eternal God. This is emphasized at the very outset of the introduction of
Hebrews. The first four verses in Hebrews chapter 1 give us that orientation
and give us through the use of certain phrases and certain terms sort of a hint
or foreshadowing of things to come.
At the very beginning we have this
emphasis on God and divine revelation, which is very important throughout the
book of Hebrews. Again and again and again we have references to God speaking,
God's promises, living on the basis of God's promises, trusting those promises.
In Hebrew 11 we went through all those different heroes, all those different
faith heroes from the Old Testament from Abel to Enoch to Noah to Abraham to
Moses. All through the Old Testament you see these individuals who believed the
promise of God.
Now a promise is something that God
revealed, something that God spoke. So one of these themes that you can trace
through Hebrews is the fact that God spoke again and again and again. His
speaking always entailed a certain response from those to whom He spoke. When
He spoke there was that expectation of an obedient response. When there was a
disobedient response there were consequences.
So the writer introduces this is at
the very beginning by saying:
NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in various ways
Emphasizing the different modes and
ways and means in which God revealed Himself in the
Old Testament.
spoke in time
past to the fathers by the prophets,
The fathers being those who were in
the Old Testament
NKJ Hebrews 1:2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom
also He made the worlds;
So there is a greater revelation
that came by the Lord Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ is the eternal God who
became flesh. He is the incarnation
of God in the flesh as the Apostle John said in the first chapter of John that:
NKJ John 1:14 …we
beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth.
NKJ John 1:14 And the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
So there was this revelation of the
deity of God that was seen in Jesus Christ so that these aspects of God’s
personhood (His attributes) were more real, more observable, and more immediate
than it ever had been before. So
there is a higher level of revelation given through His Son.
He goes on to indicate that this Son
is of the one whom He appointed heir of all things
NKJ Hebrews 1:2 …through whom also He made the worlds;
So Jesus Christ here is seen as the
immediate one, the immediate creator where as God the Father is viewed as the planner,
the architect. It is God the Son who is the immediate one. He's the onsite
building contractor. It is God the Holy Spirit also who's involved and we see
that in other passages.
But we also see in verse 3 the
emphasis on the eternality or the attributes of Jesus Christ as fully God.
NKJ Hebrews 1:3 who being the brightness of His glory
Or the outward expression
and the
express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power,
That’s the word character. He is a
perfect representative having all of the attributes of God. You can't escape
the claim in this verse that Jesus Christ had all of the attributes of deity,
that he is fully God.
But He is not only fully God; He is
also fully human. In His humanity He did things that were separate and distinct
from His deity. In His humanity He by Himself - the New King James uses the
words “He purged our sins” which is the Greek word katharismos which means He cleansed. He provided cleansing for sin which is the foundation for forgiveness of sins that He
paid the penalty for all sin on the cross
when He had
by Himself
That means apart from aid from the
other members of the Godhead.
purged our
sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
NKJ Hebrews 1:4 having become so much better than the angels, as He
has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
I emphasized when we went through
this that if He became something higher than the angels that can't be talking
about His deity because in His deity He was already and always had been higher
than the angels because He was not created. He’s eternal. The angels were
created. So in His deity He was always superior to the angels but in His
humanity as a creature He had to go through a training process that culminated
in His service to God at the cross where He paid the penalty for our sins. As a
result of that He then becomes the heir, the designated heir of God, the heir
of all things. He is elevated by means of His humanity to His position at the
right hand of God the Father.
Now the rest of the chapter
emphasizes the distinction between Jesus as the eternal Son of God as being
higher than the angels and the angels who are lower than Jesus Christ because
they are creatures and He is not.
So in this section we learn a lot about the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ is really the
focal point of the book of Hebrews and understanding His full significance. He's
the one who provides first and foremost purification or cleansing for our sin
in the third verse the first chapter. As a result He is elevated to position the
right hand of God the Father. He is elevated over the angels which puts man who
according to the psalms is first created lower than the angels and then
elevated above the angels because He fulfills the purpose of mankind as being
created in the image of God in terms of His position over the creation.
He is the one therefore because of
His promise of inheritance in verse 8 who is the one who will receive the
righteous kingdom.
NKJ Hebrews 1:8 … A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom.
But He doesn't have that kingdom
yet. He is to await it because God says as we see in verse 13 quoting Psalm
110:1:
NKJ Hebrews 1:13 …"Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your
enemies Your footstool"?
Jesus Christ as the Son of Man is
still seated at the right hand of the Father awaiting this distribution of His
inheritance and the kingdom.
So what we see as we go through
Hebrews in terms of the structure is that there are five different sections. Each
section has two components. There is a doctrinal exposition or there is a
teaching section that develops a certain key element or key aspect related to
God's plan and God's work in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then there's a practical exhortation which is another word for a challenge or
application and a warning. Sometimes the two go hand-in-hand. Sometimes the warning is just a
few verses as part of the larger exhortation. So the first four verses give us
the introduction and prelude to the book.
The first teaching section, the
first section, teaches on the superiority of Jesus as the Son over the angels and
the implications for that. The implication then is brought out in chapter 2:1-4
where we read:
NKJ Hebrews 2:1 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed
Or earnest attention
to the
things we have heard, lest we drift away.
The “therefore” is a conclusion”. Because
Jesus is the Son of God, because Jesus is the eternal Second Person of the
Trinity, because He became a human being and fulfilled all of God's plan and
purposes in His person for God's plan for the human race, because He cleansed
us, purged all sin, He has now after the resurrection been elevated to a
position that the right hand of the Father from whence He will come to take His
kingdom and receive the inheritance.
We are part of it. Therefore we must not treat this lightly. We must
take this into account; and we must pay detailed attention to these things that
we have heard.
Notice the emphasis here on hearing
something. It is the Word that God has now spoken through the Lord Jesus
Christ, Hebrews 1:2.
NKJ Hebrews 2:2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every
transgression and disobedience received a just reward,
Here again we’re talking about that
revelation of God. This is really goes back to the Old
Testament revelation because the angels were involved. We learned from
Galatians that the angels were involved in mediating that revelation from God
to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Also there are Old Testament passages that indicate that
as well.
NKJ Hebrews 2:2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every
transgression and disobedience received a just reward,
Here He is using an Old Testament illustration.
If these commandments from God in the Old Testament were such that when they
would disobey it resulted in certain negative consequences and disobedience
received its just reward that is indicating a punishment. The question is, how
shall we who have a greater revelation escape (judgment terms of divine
discipline) if we neglect so great a salvation? This verse is often taken out
of context and often quoted to refer to justification but the word salvation
here is a pregnant use of this word salvation. It refers to the entire plan of
deliverance that God has for all of humanity in all of the
human race leading to its ultimate deliverance, its culmination in the future a
Millennial or Messianic Kingdom.
NKJ Hebrews 2:3 how shall we
We as believers today
escape
Escape discipline from God
if we
neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the
Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him,
NKJ Hebrews 2:4 God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders,
with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?
Again we have the principle that
whenever God reveals anything (if it's in private He always validates it and
documents it in public) there is always objective verifiable evidence that this
is God's Word. That is why if you go back into the Old Testament and look at
the tests of a prophets in Deuteronomy 13 and
Deuteronomy 18, God recognized that there were always people who come along and
said, “Well, God told me this.”
Joseph Smith claimed to have direct
revelation from God. Muhammad
claimed to have direct revelation from God. The Buddha claimed to have insights
into the divine things. There are always people who come along and say, “Thus
says the Lord,” or “God told me this.”
There has to be a way to evaluate it
because they can’t all be saying the same thing because
they're contradictory. They contradict one another. So either they're all
lying, or if they’re all telling the truth, then God is really confused has no
idea what He's talking about. The only alternative is that there has to be a
way of validating and verifying who is speaking the truth. So God lays out
those principles of validation and verification in Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy
18. God always had confirmatory evidence whenever He spoke through miracles,
signs and wonders and the gifts of the Holy Spirit as indicated here.
Then we go into the second section. The
second section is a little bit longer. It goes from 2:5 to 4:13. We went
through the doctrinal part, the teaching part, the
explanation of key principles from 2:5 through 3:6. Then there's a longer
exhortation section from 3:7 to 4:13.
Now the main principle that we see
in the second section is the emphasis on Jesus Christ in His humanity, that He is
trained by God through the things that He suffers, the adversity He faces, the
difficulties He had to go through as a human being in the process of growing
up. Luke says in Luke 2:42 that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor
with both God and man. That passage is talking about Jesus in terms of His
childhood growth. So Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature. Stature is the
physical part; wisdom is His mental, His intellectual spiritual growth. “In favor with God and man”, i.e. in terms of His relationship with
God on the one hand and other human beings on the other hand.
We don't normally think of that
– that in His humanity Jesus had to learn the Torah. Jesus had to learn
the Old Testament. He did not know the truth intuitively. He did in His deity
but in the union of His humanity and deity Jesus is not running over here to
His deity and downloading data whenever He needs an answer to the question.
That would be like the original Internet: "I've got a problem here. I’m
gong to run over here and I'm going to use my Internet Explorer to go access to
information to help me solve my problems in my humanity."
If that were true, then the
Scripture could not come to us and say that Jesus is a pattern for our life because
we can't do that. We can’t access divine attributes to solve our problems. And
the whole point is that Jesus faced life just as we face life. The difference
is He did not have a sin nature. He didn't have a propensity to sin. He did not
have an inherited sin nature from Adam.
He didn't have the imputation of Adam’s original sin. He never committed
any personal sin. So He is the exact mirror as it were of Adam in his original
creation being absolutely perfect and without sin. What Jesus demonstrates is
that by being completely and totally dependent upon God in utilizing the
identical resources that we have; He does not sin and He grows to maturity and
He fulfills God's plan for His life. Then He's qualified to go the cross and He
goes to the cross and dies on the cross for our sins.
Key verse here is verse 10 of
chapter 2.
NKJ Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him,
That is God the Father.
for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to
glory,
That is talking about the future
long-term end result plan of God.
to make the
captain of their salvation
That is the Lord Jesus Christ.
perfect.
That is the word telios there.
through sufferings
So Jesus goes through the same test
patterns that we do, the same adversity tests teaching Him to trust God, teaching
Him to claim promises, teaching Him all those things; but He never fails. The
difference is that we fail far too often, fail all the time initially and it
takes us a long time to finally get the point and to get our focus right. The
end result is that He grew to maturity and He fulfills God's plan in a perfect
way. As a result of that He is qualified to be our High Priest.
NKJ Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren,
In order to fulfill it, He had to be
just like us. That's the point. He
had to face those challenges, those temptations and tests just like we do
without any additional resources. So He’s not over here trying to access His
deity to help Him out with the problem. What He's doing is He's taking the Word
of God that He has with the Spirit of God and He’s applying it to the
situation. So He's had to be made just like us:
that He might
be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
In making propitiation for us that
is to satisfy the righteous demands of God the holy demands of God He had to be
qualified; and to make propitiation He dies as our substitute. Well to die as
our substitute He has to be like us. A dog couldn't die for a man. A lamb
couldn’t die for a man. A bull in the Old Testament – that’s where the
writer of Hebrews is going to go by the time we get into chapters 7, 8 and 9
that these animal sacrifices couldn't do the trick. They were important because they depicted the spiritual
issues related to sin and the payment of sin and the problem of death as a
penalty for sin. But, an animal
can’t die for a human being. Only someone who is a human being can pay the
penalty as a substitute for another human being; and so the high priests had to
be made just like us.
NKJ Hebrews 2:18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted,
So His temptation, His testing, was
real as we studied.
He is able to
aid those who are tempted.
Then there's a conclusion in verses
1 through 6. In verse 7 we get into the challenge and the warning. The
challenge goes back to Old Testament incidences in the wilderness when the
Israelites coming out of Egypt disobeyed God. When they rumbled and complained
in the wilderness, when they complained that there wasn’t any rain and there
wasn’t any food; and God says:
NKJ Hebrews 3:9 Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And
saw My works forty years.
Again and again and again they saw
these great miracles of God bringing water out of the rock, bringing manna
every morning, every evening and then providing the sustenance for their
clothes. Their clothes never wore out. That would be really frustrating for
most of the ladies that were out there in the wilderness because they didn’t
get to go to DSW and shop for shoes every other week because their shoes never
wore out and their clothes never wore out. Nothing ever wore out. Everything was maintained by God. They lived in the center
of the miraculous for forty years; and yet they rejected God.
That's a great evidence for us
because it reminds us that it's ultimately not about evidence. It’s ultimately
not about that empirical quantifiable evidence. That’s important. I'm not denying that. I'm not saying it's
irrelevant; but that's not the ultimate issue. The ultimate issue is a matter
of an individual's volition. Do
they want to know God or not? Do they want to trust God or not?
So they fail so they didn't enter
into the rest which was the Promised Land. God punished
them by saying, “You're going wander in the wilderness for forty years; those
who survive through the end they're just going to get to the border of the
Promised Land but they're never going to get in.”
That included Moses, and Moses never
got in. Moses because of his disobedience had to die, and he never entered into
the land. The only two that entered into the land from the wilderness
generation from the Exodus generation were Caleb and Joshua because of their
obedience.
So the warning here is don't be like
them. Don't sacrifice your future based on the present disobedience. That is
verse 19 of chapter 3. So we see that they could not enter in because of
unbelief.
NKJ Hebrews 4:1 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His
rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.
So there's the warning here in terms
of our spiritual life never to give up, never to forget there's a future
destiny. There always remains a rest for the people of God. This is talking
about the entering into the Millennial Kingdom. That’s in verse 9.
So then we’re commanded in verse 11:
NKJ Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall
according to the same example of disobedience.
That is the example of disobedience
from Exodus generation. Then we're told that we can handle this because we have
a great High Priest who:
NKJ Hebrews 4:14 has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,
let us hold fast our confession.
Don’t give up. Don’t fall out and
fall by the wayside because:
NKJ Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot
sympathize with our weaknesses,
He understands our weaknesses. He
has gone through the tests. That doesn't mean He has gone through every single,
exact, precise, circumstance but He has gone through the basic issues. The
general categories of testing were all there and He passed. Because of that He
can sympathize with our weaknesses.
but was in
all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Now we have trouble with that
because as I pointed out because we think of temptation as that inner
subjective attraction to doing what we shouldn’t do. But testing is also objective. A trap can be baited and
we're not attracted to the bait.
I often use the example of being on
a diet. We've all had that common experience and there are things that we know
we shouldn’t eat, we’re not supposed to eat. When we see the ice cream or the
cake or whatever the ladies have fixed put out the kitchen after class we are
drawn to it. But if we have eaten well and we’re not hungry and we've been
doing well in our progress, then it really doesn't even attract us. That's the
difference that we see: the difference between a subjective inner attraction to
do something we know we shouldn't versus that external baiting of the
trap.
So Jesus was tested objectively in
all points as we are but there's never the internal correspondence to it
because that’s a result of our own sin nature. So He's objectively tested in
all points as we are yet without sin. That gives us a High Priest who can
sympathize with our weaknesses and we can go to Him terms of the daily needs
that we have in the spiritual life.
Chapters four and five developed the
concept of His priesthood and takes us to the point of quoting again Psalm
110:4 that He’s a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek. In those
first ten verses ending with that quote from Psalms 110:4 it sets us up for the
next section that comes after 6:9.
There’s a lengthy practical
challenge here that starts in 5:11 that we need to pay attention, not become
spiritually dull but pay attention and be consistent in our daily application. Once
again talks about the first principles of the oracle's
of God in verse 12, the need to pay attention to what God has revealed to
us. This is again connected down to
6:1, the elementary principles of Christ then moving on in terms of doctrine
and understanding what God has revealed to us.
The warning passage in 6:4-8 is the
one that many people go to and think that it’s talking about either people who
lost their salvation or it’s talking about people who can’t be saved, but it's
actually talking about believers who turn their back on the grace of God. They
don't lose your salvation, but they do put in jeopardy their future rewards and
ruling responsibilities in the kingdom.
Now then starting in chapter 7:1
through the end of 10, this is the core section of book, which as I pointed out
in the introduction is not really an epistle. It is more of a written sermon. It
doesn't bear all the marks of an epistle like Romans or 1 Corinthians or
Galatians. It’s more like 1 John or James. It seems to bear the marks of having
been more of a sermon that is then written out and put into a form that is
something that is similar to an epistle.
So in the next section the emphasis
goes to the high priestly ministry of Christ and its implications. It's in this
section where we have an emphasis in chapter 7 on this high priestly ministry
that Jesus has. He's not a high priest like Aaron because Aaron’s high priestly
ministry (Aaron the older brother of Moses) was a high priest because he's in
the tribe of Levi.
In the Old Testament the Levitical priesthood was based on physical qualifications. You
had to be of the tribe of Levi. You couldn't have certain deformities or
physical problems. There was not a spiritual qualification, just physical
qualifications. But that qualification is one that was limited. Those priests
could not pay their own sin penalty. They have to also have their sins
propitiated or atoned for through sacrifices. Those priests died. They did not
have an eternal priesthood. That was a limited priesthood. It could only apply
to Israel.
But the Melchizedekean
priesthood is a distinct priesthood. It was a priesthood that preceded the call
of Abraham. We’re introduced to Melchizedek in Genesis 14 after Abraham
defeated the coalition of the five kings that had invaded into Sodom and
Gomorrah and into the land of Canaan and captured a number of people,
terrorized a lot of people and had stolen and taken a lot of plunder. Then that
Abraham got his servants together, and they defeated this army and rescued
those who had been captured. On his return home he had gone through Jerusalem
and paid tithes to Melchizedek who was the priest-king of Salem
which is Jerusalem. So it predates the founding of the Jewish race
through Abraham. The Melchizedekean priesthood is a
universal priesthood that applies to all mankind. It is that royal priesthood
of Melchizedek that is the pattern for the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the argument here.
He goes on and starting in verse 20
of chapter 7 to emphasize that this priesthood is founded upon an oath or a
covenant. It is a legally binding contract. Jesus’ priesthood is based on a
covenant that is superior to the covenant of Moses. It is based on be on the
New Covenant.
This leads us into chapter 8 with an
emphasis on the fact that we have such a High Priest as Jesus seated at the
right hand of the Father. The earthly priests of the tribe of Levi were
temporary. They served as a copy, a shadow of heavenly things.
NKJ Hebrews 8:5 who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly
things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the
tabernacle. For He said, "See that you
make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."
NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also
Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.
That is, better promises. Once again
this whole idea of covenant promises is part of the revelation of God, and we
are expected to obey this revelation of God. This New Covenant is specifically
identified as the New Covenant that God promised that He would make between the
House of Judah and the House of Israel with his real estate. This is quoted
from Jeremiah 31:31-34 and the next section of chapter 8 from 8:7 down through
8:13.
Then it goes on to show the
superiority of Christ's sacrifice over the sacrifices of the Old Testament. That
was all of the detail in chapter 9. The basic point there was that the High
Priest in the Old Testament was also a sinner. The first thing he had to do on
the Day of Atonement was to take a sacrifice into the Temple for himself and
his family. Then he would take another sacrifice for the nation.
But Jesus does not need to die for
Himself because He is without sin. He is the High Priest of a superior
covenant. The blood as it states in verses 13 and 14 (the blood of bulls and
goats) and the ashes of a heifer all of which are related to the purification
rituals of the Mosaic Law. This really didn't do anything to solve the sin
problem. But it pictured something that had to happen. There had to be a
sacrifice that was efficacious and universal that could solve the problem, the
sin problem. It could pay the penalty and it had to be done through this
sacrifice. So Jesus Christ is the one who did this, verses 27 and 28.
NKJ Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
NKJ Hebrews 9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.
To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin,
for salvation.
But the point is that He is the one
who provided that sacrifice.
Chapter 10 continues that theme that
it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin; but that it is Jesus Christ who fulfills that sacrifice by
being a perfect sacrifice.
NKJ Hebrews 10:10 By that will.
That is will of God
we have
been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all
The next section from verse 11 to 13
emphasizes again that He is the one who made this perfect sacrifice and as a
result of that He is accepted by God and elevated to the right hand of
God.
This takes us down to the practical
exhortation in 10:19-39 in which there's a significant warning in verses 26
through 39. The point of the of the exhortation or the challenge is to hold
fast to your confession; not to give up, not to become weary, not to become
tired, not to become overwhelmed because there is an eventual judgment. There
is eventual accountability. This is part of the warning. Don't treat this
lightly because it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
This is a reference to Deuteronomy 4:24 as well as Hebrews 12:28. So this is
the warning that we need to have endurance.
NKJ Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that after
you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:
The promise is the Word of God (the
revelation of God) to us. Now he’s going to illustrate that by going to the
lives of these Old Testament saints who were given a promise and who believed
God, believed the promise, lived their lives on the basis of the reality of
that promise even though they never saw the promise fulfilled in their whole
life. He starts by giving a description of faith in verse 1 that faith is
external evidence of an internal reality.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen.
A person’s trust in God is sort of
an external evidence of an internal reality of his hope. That is his future
expectation and confidence. By faith, i.e. in trusting God, we understand that
the worlds were framed by the Word of God. Once again
that takes us back to the very beginning that God has spoken to us through His
Son. His speaking implies accountability.
Then he gives illustrations: Abel,
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses. All
of these over came and illustrated this principle because at some point whether
it's a big way like Abraham or small way like some of the judges. Gideon, Jephthah,
Samson are mentioned. At some point they believed God for a promise. That the thing that he's illustrating. It comes right out of
verse 36.
NKJ Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that after
you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:
So that’s what these all did. They understood the promise. They obeyed
God in either a small way or a large way, and they received the promise. So now
these Old Testament believers stand as it were (12:1, 2) as a crowd in a stands
as witnesses that have gone before us. Just as they ran their race and Jesus
ran His race with endurance and He didn't give up; He didn't fade out in the
stretch; but He reached the goal and served God. We too are to run with
endurance the race that is set before us.
But life is like a contest. It's
like a race. It’s like an athletic event. We have to be trained. We have to be
disciplined. We have to keep our focus on the end-game,
the end result, the end zone and reaching that final goal, that final prize. That
means that the coach is going to train us. The coach being God is going to take
us through both positive discipline in terms of teaching us to get rid of the
things that are non-essential in life, the things that distract us and also in
terms of negative discipline in terms chastening.
There's a quote there from Proverbs
3:11-12 quoting the fact that:
NKJ Proverbs 3:11 My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor detest His
correction;
NKJ Proverbs 3:12 For whom the LORD loves He corrects, Just as a father the son in whom he delights.
So there is training.
Therefore because of this and
because the temptation to not make it to the end, we are to be strengthened. There's
the challenge we studied recently in 12:12-17 that we are to strengthen the
hands that hangs down and the feeble knees. In other words when we want to get
off course, when we want to give up, we need to be strengthened and that means
that we need to pursue peace with all men and not to become distracted by
bitterness or mental attitude sins or losing sight of the end game of our own
inheritance.
The negative example of Esau is
given.
Then there's a comparison once again
made to Mount Sinai - the contrast of law and grace (Mount Sinai and Mount
Zion) in verses 18 to 24. The focus takes us right back to Jesus who is the
mediator of the New Covenant and the blood of sprinkling that speaks better
things than that of Abel taking us back to check for the first part of chapter
11.
Then we have our final warning
section in verses 25 to 28.
NKJ Hebrews 12:28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let
us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly
fear.
Let us hold on to grace; not give up
on grace and continue to serve God. This serving of God then is spelled out in
terms of this final series of exhortations or challenges in chapter 13:1-17 all
of which emphasize different aspects of what it means to love one another, the
first verse “Let brotherly love continue.”
At the end we are told just closing
comments from the author to pray for them and then a final benediction (a
closing statement).
NKJ Hebrews 13:20 Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead,
that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting
covenant,
NKJ Hebrews 13:21 make you complete
Just as Jesus was made complete
through the things He suffered, it is God who can make us complete in every
good work to do His will through Jesus Christ.
in every
good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight,
through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory
forever and ever. Amen.
So Hebrews then is really not an
epistle like these others that I’ve said but it is a message as the writer says
in verse 22 of exhortation. It is a challenge for us not to give up, to stay
the course and to keep our eye on the end game. That is the message of
Hebrews.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.